It's a familiar story. An embattled people suffers as their land is torn apart by fierce rival factions. Just when things look most bleak, a Man with No Name comes to town and sets things right. No, not Clint Eastwood. We're talking the Nameless Hero from JoWood Productions' Gothic RPG series. Beginning in 2001, the series quickly became an RPG fan favorite. In 2006 the quality of the series took an unexpected downturn with Gothic 3, a title rife with design flaws, logistical problems and bugs. This year after the departure of the original dev team Piranha Bytes, the Gothic gauntlet was picked up by India-based Trine Games, which cut its teeth on a stand-alone interim title--a Gothic 3.5 if you will--called Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods. Making a quality title faithful to another company's well-loved IP is tough so you have to give Trine some credit for trying. Unfortunately, Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods can be summed up in three little words: it's a mess.

Before we address the game's many problems, a little background. Continuing the fiction of Gothic 3, the story of Forsaken Gods follows the exploits of the Nameless Hero, a soldier whose reputation was built during the years of struggle between humans and orcs. His job in this game is to reunite the land of Myrtana which is being torn apart by the squabbling of three warlords, Thorus, Gorn and Lee. To do this he must overcome his weakened state, rebuild his combat, magic and trade abilities and act as mediator among the factions.

As in previous Gothic titles, the RPG element of the game is extremely complex. The system is based on the earning of experience points and levels, which in turn grant you learning points. Learning points are used at shrines or given to various teachers to buy skill upgrades and there's a goodly selection of skills to choose from. Along with a wide selection of one-hand, two-hand, ranged and heavy weapon skills, you can learn multiple other skills in the magic, blacksmithing, thieving and hunting categories. That sounds like enough customization to send any RPG fan into a swoon, but ultimately all this delicious character complexity is for naught. But how can this be, you say? What could stand in the way of my neck-deep immersion in the fantasy of Forsaken Gods? Bugs, people. Bugs.

The game is so littered with game-breaking bugs it had to have been kicked out the door with little or no testing. Even with the two post-release patches there are countless times you'll find yourself unable to go on due to broken quest triggers. The series prides itself on its "open world" construction and it's true, you can run all over the land without experiencing a loading screen, but even if the world is open, the quest progression remains in large part linear. If you happen upon a quest NPC before you're meant to, you just may break the quest and have to revert to a previous save or even start the game all over. Another fun little quest breaker is something I like to call "NPCs Behaving Badly." Quest-essential NPCs disappear in front of your eyes, refuse to speak to you, and, once in a while, walk behind impassible geometry never to return.

Aside from the awkward quest design and rampant broken triggers, the other aspect of the game that's likely to make you invent new curse words is the performance. Even on high-end machines, the loading times are long and the game hitches unbearably no matter where you are. The orc city of Trelis in particular is an absolute slide show, and turning the graphics down to their lowest setting makes the game ugly without doing anything for the frame rate.